


All Things Come

by thedevilchicken



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 07:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10508682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: The Labyrinth has always existed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galfridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/gifts).



The Labyrinth has always known a human was the one that made it. It knows how and it knows that _how_ renders _why_ very close to meaningless, although that hasn't meant it hasn't speculated over the years. It just doesn't know _who_ it was that made it, and it doesn't know _when_. Not for sure, at least. Not without some degree of doubt.

The problem with _when_ is that time doesn't mean very much where the Labyrinth is, outside the limits of the human world - at least not really, at least not to to the Labyrinth itself, because it understands the way that all things are there. When its maker dreamed it into life, last night or perhaps five hundred years from now, in the dream it had always existed and so it always has. It's watched human evolution from the moment that their planet burst to life, it's seen more than one great civilisation rise up then fall away, and it's waited. It's always hoped that one day it would meet its maker, as it supposes all things do. Sometimes it wonders if it has already but it didn't know it at the time; it doesn't miss much, but it supposes stranger things have happened it's seen many of them. 

The Labyrinth remembers Sarah. It remembers everything but even if it didn't and it could perhaps forget things sometimes, it thinks it would remember her. Some of the other visitors it's had have wanted things it doesn't really understand, not really, but everything that Sarah thought that it should be seemed natural - she thought it should be vast and winding, almost never-ending, wonderful and ever-changing, and so that was what it was; she thought most of all it should be challenging, and so it was that, too. She wanted magic and danger and puzzles and fear and she wanted so many things that the Labyrinth felt giddy with it as it changed, again, _again_ , from one thing to the next. It gave her everything she wanted, with a trick or two besides. And now she's gone again, it remembers her. Now she's gone, it misses her. 

It could bring her back, it thinks. Its master would like that, because he liked her maybe even more than the Labyrinth did itself. There have been so many visitors who've come there over the years and Jareth's beaten them all except for her, and so the Labyrinth thinks perhaps that means something important. It could bring her back and it thinks that she might even want to come and so maybe it wouldn't need to trick her into doing it, but it also thinks that she might enjoy it if it did. Jareth couldn't do it - his magic doesn't work that way or everyone there knows he'd have never let her leave - but the Labyrinth could do it. it's older than he is and it's ten times, fifty times, a hundred times stronger. It could send someone between their worlds to find her. It could set her a new challenge, the kind that she couldn't help but want to solve. It could plant crumbs of clues throughout her life till she said the words that meant Jareth could take her back. She'd come back. Perhaps this time she wouldn't leave. Perhaps this time she wouldn't want to.

Jareth couldn't bring her there, not unless she wished it, but he'd likely take the credit even so. Credit doesn't matter to the Labyrinth and even if it did, it isn't jealous. 

It knew from the start that what it needed was a master; it needed a leader, someone for its visitors to fear and love and vie against, and so Jareth is what it created, for better or for worse. It split itself, it carved a piece of itself away, it shaped it, it molded it, and it called that piece the Goblin King. And Jareth changes, sometimes, whenever a new visitor arrives; sometimes he's ugly and sometimes he's not; sometimes he's benevolent and sometimes terrifying; sometimes he's short or tall or big or small; sometimes he speaks French or he speaks Afrikaans or else it's something else that's not a language that's existed in the human world at any time, not past or present. He makes himself into whatever it is they want, just like the Labyrinth does, and he probably even thinks that that's original. He probably thinks that it was his idea. It's not important that he understand, because the Labyrinth does. 

Between visitors, Jareth's not restricted to one form any more than the Labyrinth is. He doesn't have to have a form at all unless he wants to have, and so sometimes he stays just the way he was when their last visitor left and sometimes he flits between old forms he's had or he makes himself into something else that's entirely new, wonderful or terrible depending entirely on who sees him or how he wants to be seen. Lately, though, he's been changing back to what _she_ wanted, and so the Labyrinth has, too, to match him. It puts up thick stone walls and tall stone towers in an instant and sometimes it it thinks it's almost managed to forget that it's ever been shaped into prisons or caverns or ships that fly through space or any of the other things its visitors expect of it. It's like the form that Sarah gave it is its true form. It's like she dreamed it and so that's how it is, under everything else it's ever been, and if the Labyrinth is meant to take this form above all others then so is Jareth. They're the same even though they're different. 

Jareth walks through the Labyrinth sometimes, when there's no human there for him to twist himself to please. It can feel his boot heels click against its flagstones. It can feel his gloved hands on its walls and its doors and the branches of its trees when he reaches out to touch in all the places they both know that Sarah did. He stretches out on a wooden bench or lies on a patch of grass beneath a tree and as he spins his crystal balls against his palm it's almost as if they can both see the image of her in them. It's almost like she's almost there. It's almost like she never left, and the Labyrinth knows that they both wish she hadn't. She took part of them out there with her. They're not two now, but three.

He's walking again today, and the Labyrinth watches. It watches him sigh and twist his fingers in his hair and shout out loud so all the goblins scatter; Sarah's not there to tell him how pitiful that is, and none of the goblins dare to. It watches him open its gates like he's waiting for someone, watches him pace, watches him sag dramatically against a nearby wall like he's done a hundred times and it knows just how he feels. It watches him throw one of his crystal balls that just bounces on the paving stones till it rolls to a stop at her feet. _Her_ feet. A hundred pairs of hidden creatures' eyes all watch her as she stoops to pick it up. A hundred creatures hold their breath, and Jareth's one of them. Not one of them knows how she's managed to get there, except that thing they lost when she left isn't lost anymore.

"I think you dropped this," she says, and Jareth tilts his head at her. He frowns at her and the Labyrinth sees her through those hundred pairs of eyes. It feels her footsteps through its stones as she steps closer. It feels the warmth of her skin against Jareth's as she hands him back his ball. The Labyrinth is everything and everything there is it, except for her. It's thrilling.

"Why are you here?" Jareth asks; the Labyrinth feels it might have asked that, too, and in a way it did. 

"You're a wreck without me, Jareth," she says, and there's a glint of mischief in her eyes. "Aren't you a total wreck without me?" And when Jareth laughs at that, a hundred goblins all laugh with him. The Labyrinth itself laughs with him. He doesn't even seem to mind.

"How would you know?" he asks, though that's far from denial. 

"I dreamed it," she says, and no one but the Labyrinth can understand what that might mean, though it almost looks like Jareth might.

The Labyrinth has been patient. It's watched. It's hoped. It's waited.

Jareth holds out his hand and Sarah takes it. This time she'll stay, and there'll be no more waiting. The Labyrinth's tired of being its own master; she can be master to them both, it thinks, and Jareth smiles.

And even if she's not the one who made them, even if they never know, she's the one that they both choose. 


End file.
